We begin with Margaret and Casey Brewer’s mother getting ready to visit a sick relative for a few days, but Margaret’s not exactly looking forward to staying home with their father. Apparently he’s been acting weird and doesn’t have time for the kids anymore, and he’s even stopped calling her Princess [Which she hated anyway, so…]. Dr. Brewer’s a botanist and recently lost his job at a university, so now he spends all his time down in the basement working on some project. Mrs. Brewer thinks Margaret should give him a break, but Margaret feels like something else is going on.
The kids go to fetch Dad from the basement so he can drive Mum to the airport, but he doesn’t hear them knocking on the door. They venture down, but they don’t get very far before Dad appears at the top of the stair and yells at them to “Stay out of the basement!” [I LOVE when movies/tv shows mention the title within the story!].
He apologises for yelling, but he doesn’t want them down there messing around with his work [Chuck a lock on it, m8]. After the parents leave, Casey’s playing a very ’90s video game when Margaret hears a noise coming from the basement. She thinks it sounds like an injured animal [It doesn’t, though] and convinces Casey they need to check it out [Nosy, nosy, Margaret].
They journey down to the basement again as the growling sound gets louder. The basement is super hot and absolutely covered in plants, “like a jungle”, and it’s almost as if the plants are breathing! Margaret notices a pulsating plant where the noise seems to be coming from and gets a closer look, but the thing grabs her with one of its tendrils [!!]. She manages to break free and is surprisingly not as freaked out by a conscious plant as you would expect, and then they hear Dad’s car return! They bolt upstairs, but Casey realises he left his sweater down there [He took it off because it was so hot, and just dumped it on the floor I guess?]!
It’s a real race against time as Casey scrambles back down the stairs for his sweater before Dad walks in the house, while Margaret waits helplessly at the top. Casey takes his sweet ass time though, dawdling amongst the moving plants, but makes it back upstairs just as Dad walks in. He’s very menacing all of a sudden and immediately asks if they were in the basement. Margaret cracks straight away [Why were you so worried about being caught down there if you were just gonna rat yourself out anyway? Stupid ass] and admits that they heard noises down there and were scared.
Instead of yelling at them, Dr. Brewer makes sure they’re OK before sitting them down so he can explain exactly what he’s been doing down there to make them less uneasy. He confesses that “botanists often try to take good qualities from some plants and to put them into another”, but that’s not what he’s doing – his work is a little more unusual, but he can’t tell them about it right now [So he doesn’t actually explain anything about what he’s doing then]. He then returns to the basement to do more work while Margaret’s feeling that something isn’t right strengthens.
The next morning, Margaret makes her father breakfast, but there’s no answer when she calls down to him from the basement door. He finally comes up to eat a while later, but he doesn’t want Margaret’s dirty old breakfast! Instead, she catches him eating plant food over the sink [Why not do it in the basement so you can’t be seen?]. After he hides the plant food and guzzles down some water, Margaret reveals herself and offers the breakfast she made, but he says he’s not hungry.
Concerned, she calls her mother, but Mum is dismissive and Dad ends up snatching the phone off Margaret and cutting the conversation short. Later that night, Margaret wakes up to her father muttering to himself as he heads to his room and decides to follow him. As she spies on him through the slats on his bathroom door [A strange door for a bathroom to have], she sees that he’s bleeding green ooze from a cut on his arm and has leaves growing out of his scalp [It’s that darn vegan diet!], which he’s been able to cover up with a baseball cap all day.
The next morning, Margaret tells Casey about what she saw, accusing their dad of being a mad scientist. They go down to breakfast, which Dad has so lovingly prepared for them, and Casey comments on his baseball cap before Margaret confesses to spying on him last night. He explains that the leaves growing from his scalp is just a side effect from his project [Why is no-one more worried about this?!], and the green stuff on his arm was fluid from a plant [Dirty little liar].
He tells them he’s trying to create a hybrid that’s part-plant, part-animal, but refuses to elaborate any further before serving them up his special dish of gross, slimy, green stuff and demands they eat it. They’re saved by the bell when there’s someone at the door and pour the goop into the bin while Dad answers the door. It’s Dr. Marek, an old colleague of Dr. Brewer’s, and the two adults goes down into the basement with Dad while Margaret and Casey play outside.
Casey overhears the adults arguing through the basement window and moves closer to eavesdrop, unaware of the plant tendril that’s sneaking past to attack him from behind, and the episode ends there [What a cliffhanger!].
Will Casey die?! Will Dad continue to turn into a plant?! Will the kids stay out of the basement? Check back on Wednesday for Part 2 for all the answers and more.
